tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173Tue, 27 Jun 2017 02:48:24 +0000Elizabeth EslamiAuthor of Hibernate, Winner of the Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction, and Bone Worship: A Novelhttp://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)Blogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-7127670232768900007Sun, 20 Mar 2016 13:53:00 +00002016-03-20T06:53:12.980-07:00March 24th Reading and Q&A at Marietta College<br />I'm delighted to have the opportunity to speak with students at <a href="http://www.marietta.edu/">Marietta College</a> on Thursday, March 24th.<br /><br />If you're in the area, please join us in the evening when I'll be reading from Hibernate (and my new novel in progress!) and taking questions about the writing process and publishing. Open to the public.<br /><br /><a href="http://news2.marietta.edu/node/13298">Event Information</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2016/03/march-24th-reading-and-q-at-marietta.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-9161732507021530410Fri, 04 Mar 2016 01:18:00 +00002016-03-03T17:18:08.872-08:00Indiana Review's 2016 Blue Light Workshop and Reading Series<br /><br />Tomorrow night I'm leading a workshop as part of <a href="https://indianareview.org/2016/02/interview-with-2016-blue-light-reader-elizabeth-eslami/">Indiana Review's Blue Light Reading and Workshop Series</a>. Come join us at Hopscotch Coffee in Bloomington as we talk about repetition in our work.<br /><br />Maybe you can’t step in the same river twice, but you can—and you do—go back to the same well, and even Heraclitus repeated himself. What image keeps haunting your work? What are your narrative tics? What’s your “Hail Mary pass” source of conflict: Injury? Death? Pregnancy? Infidelity? Failed marriages? Know thy weakness and bring it with you to workshop. Think our literary heroes don’t repeat themselves? Think again. Let’s get to the bottom of our repetitions and consider how we might transform them into new possibilities for our work. Bring one or two examples of images, phrases, or conflicts you find yourself returning to in your work, as well as a pen and paper.<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><br />The following evening I'll be <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/830456617098864">reading</a> at <a href="http://www.thebishopbar.com/">the Bishop</a>&nbsp;with <a href="http://matthewgfrank.com/">Matthew Gavin Frank</a> and <a href="http://www.tfaizullah.com/">Tarfia Faizullah</a>.<br /><br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2016/03/indiana-reviews-2016-blue-light.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-7173892209013528325Sun, 30 Aug 2015 13:39:00 +00002015-08-30T06:39:10.876-07:00Reading with Sarah Layden at Boxcar Books!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PUu5qPDDVTA/VeMHGaRCr5I/AAAAAAAAAJc/TAiOeuJ8OOQ/s1600/sarah%2Blayden%2Breading_edited-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PUu5qPDDVTA/VeMHGaRCr5I/AAAAAAAAAJc/TAiOeuJ8OOQ/s320/sarah%2Blayden%2Breading_edited-2.jpg" width="301" /></a></div>http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2015/08/reading-with-sarah-layden-at-boxcar.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-1379159308306846841Tue, 20 Jan 2015 03:23:00 +00002015-01-19T19:23:38.596-08:00Interview in Indiana ReviewHad a wonderful time answering <a href="http://indianareview.org/2015/01/interview-with-iu-creative-writing-faculty-elizabeth-eslami/">these smart, thoughtful questions</a> from writer-to-watch <a href="http://peterkispert.com/writing/">Peter Kispert</a> at <em>Indiana Review</em>.http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2015/01/interview-in-indiana-review.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-5432170066649988932Tue, 14 Oct 2014 22:08:00 +00002014-10-14T15:08:15.071-07:00Upcoming Events!Really excited about <a href="http://elizabetheslami.com/events/">these two events</a>:<br /><br />Courtesy of NCC Professor/Rockstar Laurel Peterson,&nbsp;I'll be visiting <a href="http://www.norwalk.edu/news.asp?1438">Norwalk Community College on October 28th </a>to read from <em>Hibernate</em> and talk about writing and publishing.<br /><br />On November 12th, I'm reading with the extraordinarily talented (and extraordinarily kind) Ross Gay at <a href="https://onestart.iu.edu/ccl-prd/events/view?type=week&amp;pubCalId=GRP12501">The Back Door in Bloomington</a>. Many thanks to IU MFA candidate Kayla Thomas for putting this reading together. http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/10/upcoming-events.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-7546803819391412003Sat, 26 Jul 2014 16:43:00 +00002014-07-26T09:43:09.927-07:00Hibernate in The Brooklyn RailA huge thank you to <a href="http://www.annemargaretdaniel.com/">Anne Margaret Daniel</a> and to the good people at <a href="http://www.brooklynrail.org/">The Brooklyn Rail</a>, <a href="http://josephsalvatore.com/author/jasalvatore/">Joe Salvatore</a> especially, for <a href="http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/07/books/a-general-strangeness">this thoughtful review of Hibernate</a>.http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/07/hibernate-in-brooklyn-rail.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-1873898891418454549Wed, 25 Jun 2014 00:37:00 +00002014-06-24T17:37:28.687-07:00Denali. Born February 1, 2002. Died June 23, 2014, 8:55am.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WZGWTCjoB4c/U6oSW8ELiGI/AAAAAAAAAIo/DCk2TwEn35c/s1600/Denali+-+last+days.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WZGWTCjoB4c/U6oSW8ELiGI/AAAAAAAAAIo/DCk2TwEn35c/s1600/Denali+-+last+days.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div><br /><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"></span>&nbsp;</div><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Yesterday, just before Denali died, there was a rabbit in our front yard, sitting with its ears back. Frozen the way rabbits are when they’re silently praying you won’t see them. <o:p></o:p></span><br /> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I thought it would run: when I opened the trunk to put in Nali’s bed, when Lyle carried Denali down the stairs to the car, when we backed down the driveway for the hour and a half drive to the vet’s office in Brooklyn, CT, where they were waiting to euthanize her. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">If I wanted to tell you a story, it would be that Denali chased that rabbit, maybe even caught it, finally making good on the promise of her best days in Montana, fox-diving in the sagebrush at Clark’s Reservoir, trying to flush and finish her quarry. But the rabbit’s prayer worked: Denali never saw it. Never saw the gray cat that walked right through the yard earlier while she was knuckled over, legs splayed, trying to empty her bladder.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">*****************************************<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">On the way there, I rode with her in the back. Partly it was to keep her from falling from the seat to the floor, but it was also because I wanted to memorize. Tips of her ears. The scruff that the vets always called her “rabbit fur,” because it was so soft. Her feet, even with the drag sores. I wanted her to climb into my lap, ride over my shoulder like she did when she was a puppy. She slept some, one foot planted on the floor to steady herself, even though I wanted to be the one to steady her. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Rarely did she want help at the end, unless it was the stairs. Rarely would she accept it. Those last nights when we knew it was the end, she would try to run somehow, like she was a bush plane that could achieve flight if only she sped up over the rocks and ruts. We chased after her, alongside her, trying to steady her when she walked, when she did her business, but she was panicked by us scrambling so close. Inevitably she fell. In another day or two, she wouldn’t have been able to stand. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Her face when she fell. She could not understand this failure. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">In the car, she looked at me. She wasn’t scared, just tired. I spoke nonsense about the rabbit in the yard, left kisses in the occipital hollows where she’d wasted, muscle tone gobbled up by the Cushing’s, the degenerative myelopathy. I called the vet to tell them we were coming, listened to the tech’s voice go soft. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">At the hospital, Lyle lifted her out of the car and put her down in the parking lot, and I turned her feet upright and gave her water from a little silver bowl. She ate deer nuggets – deer my brother had killed – her new favorite food of only two days, from my hands. She stayed outside with Lyle, watched me walk away to tell the techs we were here. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Inside, there was a woman, perfect posture, sitting with a crying cat inside a box. I must have been whispering because I had to repeat myself as the tech walked out from behind the big desk, but it seemed like the tech was whispering, whispering, opening the door to the room where there had never been a small green rug on the floor, only ever the bright rising table and scale. Now there was this shaggy, sad little rug, this green shower mat. This is what they put dead animals on, I was thinking, and I walked back out to the car, to Lyle and Denali, and told them everything was ready. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">*****************************************<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">During the last twelve years, we have moved four times. Deep South to the Rockies. Rockies to the Pacific Northwest. Pacific Northwest to the Northeast. From the Northeast now to the Midwest. We have had four landlords. We have been housekeeper and dogsitter and front desk and museum director and student and unemployed and teacher and author and professor. We have been lonely and joyous. We have climbed mountains and walked through stone tunnels in the Dakotas and sat at the top of waterfalls. We have been stuck in ice in a 1995 Ford Taurus by the Big Hole River and used a threadbare carpet under the wheel for traction. We have lived in a brown shoebox and filled an empty mega-house in Connecticut with thrift store furniture. We still do not have smartphones. We have survived two hurricanes that bent a forest our way and dug out from under four blizzards. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We have done all these things with Denali. There is only one Denali. We have lost us. We were the three pack. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">If you are talking to me now, or for the rest of my life, know that it’s not really me anymore. I just look like me, maybe. A good act. This person without Denali is someone I cannot recognize, someone I do not want to know. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Our whole lives? Denali. Each day? Denali. Morning walk. Night-time walk. The reason we declined your dinner invitation, your trip into the city, the reason that bedroom door in our house was closed, the reason I looked so tired all those nights during class, the reason we missed your event, the reason I didn’t take your phone call, the reason we chose that house, the reason for all the water bowls, all the non-slip carpets on the floor, the reason we drove across the country all those times. Denali. Always for Denali. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">That scar on my knees. The one on my hand, from the leash. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">*************************************************************<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We put her bed over that goddamn green death mat. She got right in it like it was nap time. Everybody was giving her treats, different kinds – milkbones and beef treats and the deer nuggets – and she was eating and eating. “Poor Denali,” the tech said, “it’s been a long, tough road.” I was thinking, should she be eating this much? Could she aspirate? Could she choke and die before she dies?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The first shot went in her thigh. “She’ll still be with us,” they said. “She’ll be relaxed, but she might still be able to hear you, so feel free to talk to her.” And the fucking thing of it was, she was so crazed with all the cookies that the last thing she did was crane her neck back at the other door, the one behind her, to see if more people were coming with more cookies. That’s how her body remained, head arched back like a stallion biting at a fly on&nbsp;its neck, and the last thought before she faded had to have been, <em>my god but this is a day for cookies</em>. It took a while before I realized she was in a narcotic limbo, just a little froth at the edge of her lip. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">When the vet came in, she laughed and pulled Denali into the center of the bed, straightened her neck. She said some things, I think. I can’t remember. She was a good vet. We’d had seven of them in Denali’s twelve years, and this vet was the best of them. Denali was a medical marvel: allergies and hypothyroidism and arthritis and Cushing’s and DM. Last month, a foreign object appeared on an x-ray of her stomach, but no one could say if it was really there. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The good vet gave Denali the second shot. I watched her chest like an insane person. I was waiting to see if she could really die. If that was even possible. All these years, I never believed it possible. When she fell in the river and refused to swim, she didn’t die. When the stupid vet from Oregon told us her lymph nodes were huge and it was entirely likely she was dying of cancer, it turned out to be hayfever. She didn’t die. On my first night of teaching, when she ate some animal’s feces and grew deathly ill, she didn’t die. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The vet put her hands on Denali’s chest. “Sweet girl,” she said. She looked at me. I looked away, at Denali’s bare belly – redneck belly, Lyle called it – where they’d shaved her for an ultrasound. At the shave marks on her front and back legs, where they’d taken blood. The fur had never grown back, not after months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“She’s gone,” she said. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">************************************************************<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m sorry if I’m messy in my grief. I know I’m supposed to force a watery smile and wash the snot off my face. I know I have boxes to pack and we have a broken lawn mower to recycle and a new city to move to, and that’s supposed to be better because Denali never lived with us in that city, but the truth is I am terrified to move away from the last place she knew with us, or maybe I am terrified to be in a place she never knew with us, except for the shitty Travelodge on East 3<sup>rd</sup> St. where she spent her last week with us in a room with the ugliest carpet I have ever seen, shamrocks or waterlillies on a field of brown, while we looked at house rentals between rushing back and forth to the hotel to help her piss on a little square of grass next to a dumpster. We drove her, weak and falling off the backseat of my car, to shit behind a Bed Bath &amp; Beyond.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">On the first night at the Travelodge, she ate somebody’s chicken bones off the asphalt before we could stop her and thought it was the best hotel ever. On the last afternoon at the Travelodge, I dragged her out to piss in the patch of grass by the dumpster and a huge, shirtless biker came around the corner and spooked her. The old Nali was back, lunging at him, nearly falling over. “That’s alright, girl,” he drawled. “That’s alright.” When I apologized, he told me he had a whole box of pittie puppies at home in his garage, if I was interested. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Between those days, she threw up on the patch of grass. Was carried in and out of the car every day, no longer able to navigate her ramp. Fell innumerable times. Slept at the foot of the bed, covered in a blanket. Had one good day walking for a few minutes at Griffy Lake, a new place, new woods. There were tiny frogs, small as dimes, green and brown, that jumped over her paws, but she didn’t see them. One of the brown ones landed on the toe of my boot and held fast. There were mole tracks across the path, the ground erupted and erupting, a chunk of earth that opened tentatively and closed every few seconds, some subterranean creature watching giants through a door. Denali was exhausted and couldn’t go far, and we took her back to the car for water. Back to the Travelodge. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The truth is, I am terrified that I will have to drive by that Travelodge every day on my way to campus, that I will show up to class and fall straight down on the floor in front of my students. Flop around, the last electric signals dimming in me. That on the day I meet my colleagues, I’ll stand there with a trembling, outstretched hand and crazy red eyes and they will reconsider their new hire. I didn’t look like this in the interview. I wasn’t crazy in the interview, sick, whatever this animal I am now. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">*******************************************************<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Grief marks you as unmanageable, rogue, off the grid. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I am all those things right now. Lyle is. We are people to be scared of. Diseased and poisoned and brazen. I am Denali as a stray puppy, running in that ditch, the traffic of all of you rushing past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I have no spine, no bones. I am old Denali, using the wall to hold her upright when she walks down the hall. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">And so, if you love me, if you love us, you’ll try to plug the hole. Toss flowers in. ((Hugs)) “I am so sorry for your loss.” “Our pets love us unconditionally.” Whatever your preference of condolence. I know, I say and write these things, too. I feel helpless before your grief, and I walk by real quick, flinching, and throw a fistful of flowers in. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Thank you. But you cannot fill this hole. Not ever. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Please don’t say “Rainbow Bridge” to me. Please don’t call her a “fur baby.” She was a dog, for one, and I don’t care for babies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For the record, she did not look into my eyes and tell me it was Time To Let Her Go. Her eyes said she was tired. Her embarrassment when she fell on her face twice in one night said that we were on the verge of too far, and that we could not let her go there.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We know it was time. We know it was the right thing. We did not let her suffer. All these things are true. Tell me, and I will say thank you. I will offer you my best watery smile. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">One of my great aunts told me once about when her childhood dog died. She was maybe eight or so at the time, inconsolable, along with her siblings. After a day of weeping, their mother – my great-grandmother – said, “If this is how you’re going to react, you shouldn’t be allowed a dog.” Of course I thought her heartless. But she was of another generation. And my great aunt said it worked. To me she told the story with obvious admiration. My mother was smart, she said. She could make her children un-learn grief. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>It’s not a natural state.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">***************************************************************</span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Afterward, walking out to the car, I could barely move my legs. Our old symbiosis. When my toenail turned black, fell off after a long hike in Missoula, Denali, two thousand miles away in South Carolina with my parents, lost a nail. There were other times like this. Maybe I’m going lame, I thought. It felt like I couldn’t walk right unless I was holding her leash. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We could not bury her here, in another landlord’s rented yard, and all day today I have tried not to think of them cremating her. Tried not to think about where they put her body yesterday, after. Who it was that took her. Someone in another room was laughing when the needle went in. That cat in the box was crying, but Nali couldn’t hear it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Someone was ordering lunch. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Best not to consider this person I am now, who packed Denali's things in a box, wrote her name on it. Took the beds to the animal shelter that smelled of piss, all the barking dogs, the woman there who looked scared of us. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I drove on the way home from the vet. It seemed like it was taking forever to get there, longer than the hour and a half, and I thought I kept passing the same grove of trees where we had struck and killed a squirrel a month ago, while taking Nali for her ultrasound. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Same trees, over and over. “I think we’re lost,” I kept telling Lyle. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“No,” he said, “You’re fine. I always think that too.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I think we’re lost. I know we are.&nbsp;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span>&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PfSeHI39Lnk/U6oWdyOBEOI/AAAAAAAAAI0/EWjswfT_guY/s1600/Denali+-+2009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PfSeHI39Lnk/U6oWdyOBEOI/AAAAAAAAAI0/EWjswfT_guY/s1600/Denali+-+2009.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><o:p></o:p></span>&nbsp;</div><br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/06/denali-born-february-1-2002-died-june.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-7853035851230191947Mon, 26 May 2014 17:15:00 +00002014-05-26T10:15:48.960-07:00The HIBERNATE Playlist at Largehearted BoyDavid Gutowski, aka <a href="http://blog.largeheartedboy.com/">Largehearted Boy</a>, invited me to make a playlist for <em>Hibernate</em>. Some of these songs are mentioned in the book, while others served as inspiration. <br /><br />This was so much fun! <br /><br />Check out the playlist <a href="http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2014/05/book_notes_eliz_8.html">here</a>.<br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-hibernate-playlist-at-largehearted.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-6062190144194383967Fri, 16 May 2014 20:51:00 +00002014-05-16T13:51:24.292-07:00Praise from KirkusFrom Kirkus:<br /><br />"Eslami’s incisive story collection explores the shadowed corners of working-class lives... These worlds, if bleak, are never less than perfectly honest; social stratification and race dissolve as the rich and poor, from every corner of the world, struggle to find anything worth holding on to. If they do, it often owes to a programmed instinct for survival—composed all the while in stark, unflinching prose.<br /><br />A searing array of stories envisioned through crystal-clear eyes."<br /><br />Read the full review <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/elizabeth-eslami/hibernate/">here</a>.http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/05/praise-from-kirkus.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-3852552708061671423Fri, 25 Apr 2014 21:54:00 +00002014-04-25T14:54:07.161-07:00Raymond Carver!Kind words about <em>Hibernate </em>from the folks at 5 Minutes for Books. Here's a snippet:<br /><br />"In this prize-winning collection of short stories, Elizabeth Eslami cuts deeply to the heart of the human experience in modern America, as with an expertly-wielded knife. Written in a sparse, clear form that reminded me of Raymond Carver, Hibernate takes its characters through trials and joys of everyday life, holding up a mirror to our own experience."<br /><br />Read the rest <a href="http://books.5minutesformom.com/34927/hibernate/">here</a>.http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/04/raymond-carver.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-2616747945223784909Fri, 18 Apr 2014 16:26:00 +00002014-04-18T09:26:22.898-07:00Neon Magazine Reviews HIBERNATEAbsolutely thrilled and humbled by <a href="http://www.neonmagazine.co.uk/?p=4454">this thoughtful, generous review by Christopher Frost for Neon Magazine.</a> http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/04/neon-magazine-reviews-hibernate.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-5133097272120655701Sat, 12 Apr 2014 19:48:00 +00002014-04-15T17:39:41.762-07:00GratefulWhat a gift it is to teach these writers. Even when they make me cry by doing stuff like this:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kHOJpPxDerA/U0mYGdjXvNI/AAAAAAAAAIY/EJKWNGFzzAo/s1600/Launch+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kHOJpPxDerA/U0mYGdjXvNI/AAAAAAAAAIY/EJKWNGFzzAo/s1600/Launch+photo.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1.0-9/p720x720/10175058_10203245559720830_402598069_n.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img alt="" border="0" class="fbPhotoImage img" height="320" id="fbPhotoImage" src="https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1.0-9/p720x720/10175058_10203245559720830_402598069_n.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /><br />With Brittany DiGiacomo, whose work you can read <a href="http://brittanytpon.wordpress.com/">here</a>.<br /><br /><a href="https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1.0-9/p403x403/1010304_10203524970787223_1760676632_n.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img alt="Photo" border="0" class="img" height="320" src="https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1.0-9/p403x403/1010304_10203524970787223_1760676632_n.jpg" style="left: 0px;" width="240" /></a><br /><br />With Tiffany Ferentini. Find her <a href="https://twitter.com/Ferenteeny">here</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://ferenteeny.tumblr.com/">here</a>.<br /><br />In addition to&nbsp;their substantial commitments as&nbsp;MFA candidates, their work on the page as novelists, <em>and</em> their work in the world, Brittany and Tiffany also&nbsp;lend their talents&nbsp;as editors to&nbsp;<a href="http://mvillemfa.com/journal/">this beautiful publication.</a>http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/04/grateful.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-1468977766448963729Fri, 14 Mar 2014 22:31:00 +00002014-03-14T15:31:04.427-07:00She Knows Chooses HIBERNATE for its March Book ListShe Knows has chosen <em>Hibernate </em>for its <a href="http://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/1032559/march-books-new-reads-from-danielle-steel-steena-holmes-and-more">March book list</a>, along with titles by Grant Jarrett, Steena Holmes, and the always wonderful <a href="http://bethhoffman.net/">Beth Hoffman</a>. <br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/03/she-knows-chooses-hibernate-for-its.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-6173658656735851207Sun, 02 Mar 2014 22:07:00 +00002014-03-02T14:11:00.375-08:00Book Launch!Come celebrate with us!&nbsp;&nbsp;There will be&nbsp;new words, old friends, and plenty of cupcakes.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.cuppapulp.com/2014/02/08/events-for-winterspring-2014/">official launch party</a> for <em>Hibernate</em> will be on April 5th at <a href="http://www.cuppapulp.com/about-cuppa-pulp/">Cuppa Pulp Booksellers</a>, with a reception at 6pm (cupcakes, I tell you!) and a signing at 7pm. <br /><br />It means&nbsp;the world&nbsp;to me to have&nbsp;my former student and Manhattanville MFA candidate <a href="http://www.donnamiele.com/">Donna Miele</a> hosting the launch. Donna is a wonderful writer, and it was a pleasure to read the early stages of her novel-in-progress. <br /><br />Trust me, if you don't already know&nbsp;Donna's name&nbsp;and her work, you will&nbsp;in the very near future. <br /><br />Here we are talking about <a href="http://www.cuppapulp.com/2014/02/25/meet-elizabeth-eslami/">stories, frogs, cadavers, and pointy-headed dogs</a>.<br /><br /><br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/03/book-launch.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-7397290989964370297Fri, 14 Feb 2014 20:02:00 +00002014-02-14T12:02:10.200-08:00Letter to a High School Guidance Counselor, Upon Her Retirement <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Dear Ms. Woodyard,<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Hearing your name makes me fifteen years old again, at the very best moment of fifteen. Not the fifteen when one is lost – which is so much of life at fourteen and fifteen and eighteen and twenty-one and twenty-five, longer than any of us would like to admit – but the fifteen of SDS, the fifteen when one is called into the office of Jo Woodyard. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">So you’re in there and the winter light is coming through the windows and you’re a little scared because you know she’s going to talk to you about the future, which feels ungraspable, which likely will entail college in some strange place, a school occupied by those older SDS alums who come back to give talks about where they are now, leaning on desks or sitting on desks and seeming cocky and wise with the secrets of academia. They have girlfriends and boyfriends and they drink and do internships and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they no longer live with their parents, </i>which frankly blows your mind. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>But anyway, forget that. Focus. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Jo Woodyard is standing across from you, ready to talk about The Future. What schools? What plans? Do you want to be a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond? She asks you this, and you realize you have never really thought of yourself as a fish before, but now that you think of it, there are a lot of options. Probably you wouldn’t want to be a goldfish in one of those koi ponds, all burnished in glittery scales with no place to go. Maybe you’re one of those bottom dwellers, those nurse sharks with the crazy, wiry mustaches, cruising the sea floor, or a rare pink dolphin in the Amazon, making do in cloudy waters with very little, only showing your beauty to discerning eyes. Come on, cut it out. Focus. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jo Woodyard</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">has advice</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Jo Woodyard seems serious and grave and invested in you when, truth is, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you’re</i> not really invested in you. Your whole life only seems to consist of now, with your friends, when you laugh so hard it really does feel like you’ve ruptured something deep inside, one of those superfluous organs like the spleen or a spare kidney. Your whole life is listening to Enya and crying under your bedspread. Sneaking out of Mike Johnson’s philosophy class to watch movies at Converse Cinemas. Pretending you know what’s what because you’ve had your first coffee, your first cigarette, because you’ve read poetry in a room with people who didn’t laugh you out of the joint. If there is a future out there, it’s too far away for you to see, and probably, you have always thought, you just have to age yourself into it, like how wisdom teeth grow without any of your own doing, because of some wide-mouthed, prognathous cave man ancestor – no offense to him. The future, you have always thought, happens by accident. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">And anyway, Flip and Heather and Meagan are waiting for you in the art room where you, de facto members of the Loser Arty Group, go to eat lunch. If you do imagine a future, you pray it’s one in which you are Cool Arty Types living together in a ramshackle house writing poetry, all of you with Winona Ryder’s hairdo, all of you dating Ethan Hawke. After this is over with Jo Woodyard, after you figure out whether you’re a nurse shark or a pink dolphin, you’ll go back in that room and sit on the plastic milk crates that make a bingo game of your ass cheeks, and Meagan will ask, how did it go? “Did she suggest that you have a future in the custodial arts?” Flip, who has memorized the entire class’s GPA from a list he clandestinely read upside down on Jo Woodyard’s desk, wonders if you want to know your rank. He is eating a chili dog. You have Lunchables, which you’ll read about in ten years as being only slightly above pork rinds as the worst possible thing for human consumption.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">How did it go? You say it was fine. It went fine. You don’t tell them about the light in the windows or how you scanned Jo Woodyard’s bookshelf and her photographs because all adults, especially teachers, are Fascinating Mysterious Unicorn Creatures. How weird is it when you run into them outside class at Belk or Hardees and they’re masquerading as Regular People, people who get oil changes and file taxes and trim their toenails? It’s all too much. You don’t tell them that Jo Woodyard was serious about your future, which kind of made you serious about your future, like maybe it didn’t have to be an accident after all. Maybe writing was something that, you know, maybe, possibly, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could be done</i>. By, like, you. She didn’t even seem to be kidding. You thought maybe she’d hold the door to her office as you were leaving and say, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">psych</i>. Good luck, kid. You’re gonna need it. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">But Jo Woodyard didn’t</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">And so you leave, your head doing that thing where someone praises you, someone believes in you, and now the whole head is beating like a heart or a fingertip, that rush of blood, and you want to tell everyone and no one, keep it a secret, because when you tell too much, when you share too much, or with the wrong people, it’s like being robbed over the course of one whole day, a little bit missing every time. And now, see, there is this thing called The Future, and even if you never figure out whether you’re a nurse shark or a goldfish or a pink Amazonian dolphin, you know you can be smart about it. Be brave or fake bravery, at the very least. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Take a bite of that PB&amp;J and look around the SDS art room one last time. You can’t know this, but about fourteen years after you graduate – my god, you’ll be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ancient!</i>– you’ll come do a reading, stand up there in a bookstore near that place where you had your first coffee and read putrid poetry that no one laughed at, that place that is now a noodle shop, and you’ll be reading from your novel, and right there in the audience?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Jo Woodyard. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Future is now</i>. Jo Woodyard is sitting there while you answer questions, most of which are posed by your mother in the front row who doesn’t realize she is embarrassing you by publicly vocalizing her abiding desire that they Make Your Book Into A Movie. Still, all you can think is, Jo Woodyard. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">What is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">she</i>thinking? You can’t tell now, any better than you could then. You’re not fifteen. You are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thirty-two</i>. Even Flip probably no longer remembers his class rank. It’s winter-dark, save for the Christmas lights on Morgan Square. Someone is asking you your best advice to writers, something you’ve answered a dozen times in the last six months. And so you say, leaning on that lectern, “be stubborn.” That’s the truth. You were just stubborn about it. You decided the future wasn’t an accident, or at least, it didn’t have to be, sometimes. And when she leaves – when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> leave, Jo Woodyard – you are walking out that door when you say the very best thing possible. “I’m glad you were stubborn.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m glad you were stubborn about the future, Ms. Woodyard. We all are. And thanks for letting us swim in your pond, big fish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Liz Eslami <o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SDS, Class of 1996<o:p></o:p></span></div>http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/02/letter-to-high-school-guidance.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-4397514479944742242Thu, 09 Jan 2014 16:09:00 +00002014-01-09T08:19:57.442-08:00Here<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What she says, instead of the name, is “over there.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The name of the place she won’t say is Afghanistan, and the soldier serving is her cousin. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Hope you get some turkey over there,” she told him at Thanksgiving via Facebook. Once she called it “far away,” but usually it’s “over there,” George Cohan’s WWI anthem, with Johnny and his gun, the indomitable Yanks, a cheerful bleating that sounds less like a war score than kicking music for the Rockettes. If you need proof of how far we’ve moved psychologically, listen to the scores of war movies. The sugar-toothed patriotism of “Over There” becomes the slo-mo sturm und drang of Barber’s Adagio for Strings in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Platoon</i>, becomes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Zero Dark Thirty’s</i> Jason Clarke quipping Wu-Tang Clan between waterboarding. We’re a country of ad men because we know when to nudge the dial.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But she knows the name, just as she knows what she wants. For her cousin to come home safe, for the photo of an explosion on his Facebook page to be a movie still, for his leave to roll around so he can spend time with the family. Instead of his fire cloud, his Christmas tree garlanded with ammo rounds, her page displays her little girl garlanded with a pink beaded necklace over her bare chest, a princess tiara sliding from her scalp. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Over there” feels like something a child would say. Like “down there,” hands cupped over her privates when she has to pee. The shame of what is happening in places you’ve never seen. George Cohan of course would disagree. FDR awarded Cohan the Congressional Gold Medal for “Over There.” Being vague <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is </i>the point. Wikipedia: “As the specific country ‘over there’ is not named, the words can serve as an exhortation for sending troops to any foreign military intervention.” We’re a country of ad men because we understand one size fits all. “Over There” was also used as an advertising jingle. “Pack your little kit, show your grit, do your bit.” WWI becomes a commercial for a Gillette Pro-Glide Razor: Johnny in the shower, running a blade over his jaw. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But here is the best part. She says, “Hope you get some turkey over there,” and he says, “I blew something up, does that count?” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>A day ticks by before she responds: “If it made someone safer, yes, it counts. Now go eat turkey.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The specificity of the turkey is what kills me. So many unknowns in this “over there” – where war is happening, who “someone” is, how to score the war that never ends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But let’s give thanks for that big uncomplicated bird. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Life exposes the fallacy of “over there.” Boston marathon bombs in pressure cookers. American kids in mansions stock-piled with ammo. An Afghanistan or a US in which two things can exist side by side: a girl in a princess tiara and a soldier’s severed leg. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If life exposes the fallacy, so too must literature. Often war writers use second person or first person plural, injecting us into what is foreign, the battlefield – Tim O’Brien’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Things They Carried</i> – or home ground, alien ground for those left behind. “Our fathers, so many of them, climbed onto the olive green school buses and pressed their palms to the windows and gave us the bravest, most hopeful smiles you can imagine, and vanished. Just like that.” Ben Percy’s “Refresh, Refresh.” Siobhan Fallon: “You also know when the men are gone. No more boots stomping above, no more football games turned up too high…no more sneakers on metal stairs, cars starting, shouts to the windows above to throw down their gloves on cold desert mornings.” These writers don’t leave blanks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Maybe it’s the writer’s job to complicate what’s “over there.” Maybe the job is to simplify. A soldier’s brain, plain gone. Legs gone. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;A brand new face.</span></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now that you’re looking at them,&nbsp;are these the least or most complicated of images? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The best writers let us decide for ourselves. Put us inside it. Make it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">here</i>, where it counts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2014/01/here.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-4914791741150811320Sun, 22 Dec 2013 04:23:00 +00002013-12-21T20:23:30.288-08:00Hibernate has a cover!And here it is, this strange and wondrous&nbsp;thing of beauty! <br />Courtesy of the talented Monique Goossens.&nbsp; Check out more of her work&nbsp;<a href="http://moniquegoossens.com/">here</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LiRPCFJudHA/UrZoGdKlQFI/AAAAAAAAAHw/PzJuB5Guk_E/s1600/ESLAMI_-_HIBERNATE_COVER_JPG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LiRPCFJudHA/UrZoGdKlQFI/AAAAAAAAAHw/PzJuB5Guk_E/s640/ESLAMI_-_HIBERNATE_COVER_JPG.jpg" width="425" /></a></div>http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2013/12/hibernate-has-cover.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-1151147926468586017Tue, 15 Oct 2013 14:50:00 +00002013-10-15T07:50:35.459-07:00Tupelo Quarterly is Live!I just accidentally typed, "Tupelo Quarterly is Love!" which isn't far off the mark. Come look at <a href="http://tupeloquarterly.com/">this beautiful thing we created.</a><br /><br /><br />Jessamyn Smyth is a magician.<br /><br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2013/10/tupelo-quarterly-is-live.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-6025927900772015764Sat, 28 Sep 2013 22:38:00 +00002013-09-28T15:38:20.056-07:00New Iranian American Writing at AAWW's Page Turner Festival!<br />Come join us at&nbsp;the Asian American Writers Workshop's&nbsp;<a href="http://pageturnerfest.org/">Page Turner Festival in Brooklyn!</a><br /><br />On Saturday, October 5th, I'll be reading with fellow Iranian American writers Nahid Rachlin, Mehdi Okasi, and Maryam Mortaz&nbsp;on a panel&nbsp;celebrating New Iranian American Writing. <br /><br />And be sure to stop by the Make-A-Poem booth to say hi to Manhattanville MFA's fabulous Mark Nowak and Camille Rankine, along with&nbsp;our Mville students!<br /><br />New Iranian American Writing Panel 1-2pm<br />Roulette Gallery<br /><a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&amp;q=Roulette&amp;fb=1&amp;gl=us&amp;hq=roulette&amp;hnear=0x89c24416947c2109:0x82765c7404007886,Brooklyn,+NY&amp;cid=0,0,11294310120881960698&amp;ei=_wA9UpvtBe7C4AOeo4C4DQ&amp;ved=0CKEBEPwSMA0" target="_new">Roulette &amp; YWCA, Atlantic Ave &amp; 3rd Ave, Downtown Brooklyn</a>http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-iranian-american-writing-at-aawws.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-5311901323340590232Sat, 03 Aug 2013 00:59:00 +00002013-08-02T17:59:07.310-07:00Victory Forge in The SunI've read and loved <i>The Sun </i>forever -- it's a beautiful magazine full of great writing. What an honor to have my story, "Victory Forge," in the August issue.<br /><br />Here's an <a href="http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/452/victory_forge">excerpt</a>.http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2013/08/victory-forge-in-sun.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-3018892933796405646Thu, 11 Jul 2013 22:25:00 +00002013-07-11T15:25:34.299-07:00The Story and The QuestionExcerpted from a talk I gave at Writers on the River in Corvallis, OR, May, 2013:<br /><br />The Story and The Question<br /><br />Say you want to write a story, or if you’re truly dedicated – and maybe even a little masochistic – say you want to write a novel. &nbsp;Where do you begin?<br /><br />“I’ve got an idea for a novel.” – said every person you’ve ever met.<br /><br />What could possibly be the problem with that? Isn’t it wonderful, all these people walking around, brimming with ideas for novels? &nbsp;The problem is that, “Idea for a novel,” for most people, is shorthand for a condensed version of plot. What people in the publishing world call a pitch. Eat, Pray, Love: A woman finds herself divorced and travels the world, healing and finding love again. That’s an example of a pitch. &nbsp;A pitch is fine and dandy, but here’s the trick of having an IDEA for a novel:<br /><br />You actually have to write the novel.<br /><br />You have to pile up three hundred pages of words, the right words, in the right order, every day for two years, or three or four, and make something vaguely bookshaped, something that kinda sorta looks like your idea… from four years ago, which, turns out, wasn’t enough to hang your hat on, much less three hundred pages on.<br /><br />So… scratch that. Let’s begin with CHARACTER. &nbsp;Pretty good plan, and something you hear a lot about in writing workshops. Worry about plot later, begin with character. Someone fully imagined, someone you know down to his flat but oddly striated toenails. You’ve imagined his quirks, you’ve performed mock interviews with your character, who is a scuba diver named Barney Peltz from Jones Beach who smells of stress sweat and mildewed shower grout, whose trailer is full of wood paneling and cockatiels all named Bernice, and then… and then… What?<br /><br />You realize you have a character, complete with a history and an encyclopedia of more quirks than you could possibly use, but you have no story. &nbsp;Plus, that thing about the cockatiels no longer works so well in chapter 6, when Barney begins rehabilitating bobcats.<br /><br />Nearly every technique we know for beginning a novel is fraught with risk. Risk that we’ll run out of steam, that we’ll begin with something, but it won’t be enough to keep us going till the last page.<br />Start with THEME? Help us out, John Gardner.<br /><br />"By theme we mean not a message -- a word no good writer likes applied to his work -- but the general subject, as the theme of an evening of debates may be World Wide Inflation." &nbsp;- John Gardner.<br /><br />Now there’s a sexy theme! There are a lot of novels about race, about class, about mortality. How then can theme be enough?<br /><br />How about if you begin with VOICE. But whose voice? Character’s voice? Narrator’s voice? A husky voice, a quavering voice, a saw through your bones voice, a Southern “I’m fixing to get Brittany from Super WalMart” voice. Can you write a novel with only voice? A tall order.<br /><br />Begin with SETTING, but know before the last cab tears across the Brooklyn Bridge which of those 8 million people you’re populating your novel with, and why their story must be told here and now and nowhere else in this wide world.<br /><br />No matter where you begin, there are still so many variables. Character, plot, voice – these are all essentials for constructing a novel, much as the tire, the steering wheel, the gas pedal are key components of a working automobile. But the engine – that’s what we’re really looking for.<br /><br />What if we started somewhere else? From a place of curiosity and heartbreak and mind-rattling frustration. <br /><br />“All we can do in the face of that ineluctable defeat called life is to try to understand it. That – that is the raison d’etre of the art of the novel.” – Milan Kundera<br /><br />“To try to understand it,” says Mr. Kundera. Writing is just that. To try to understand something, and not necessarily to succeed. It’s a messy business. We’re talking about an unanswerable question, the kind of question that sits at the core of you and only you, the kind that you’re willing to spend a lifetime worrying at, like a permanent splinter that keeps working its way down deeper into your heart. <br /><br />When you write a novel, you’ll make certain decisions, and they will inevitably be the wrong decisions. You’ll have to change strategies, change characters, themes, ideas. So, if you’ve got that one thing, if you’re pinning it all on a single idea – the Uncle who fought in Vietnam, who had some interesting stories to tell – if that’s all you’ve got, believe me when I tell you it just ain’t enough.<br /><br />Here’s where the sermon comes in. You must have something deeper and richer than a single character or a clever idea. You must have something inexhaustible, a fire that will burn even if you tear away all the kindling, a fire that will keep you warm for the years you will spend stacking these words.<br />That thing is your question, and only you know what it is.<br /><br />The Question. Nabokov called it the “nerves of the novel… the subliminal coordinates with which to focus the plot.”<br /><br />I like that he called it the “nerves” of the novel, don’t you? Because The Question is not the heart that fails, or the eyes that fade, or the tongue, dulled. The question is a live wire, connected to everything, providing juice for the whole body of the novel.<br /><br />“Coordinates” works beautifully too because you can’t get lost. Change character, change setting, but let the question bring you back to the center, every chapter, again and again.<br /><br />You see, too, that it’s connected to plot. Which means, by the way, that we’re not arguing that you dispense with the building blocks of a novel; rather, that you let them grow out of the question. The question helps you see character, setting, plot, theme, voice, POV. It’s the novel as kaleidoscope. Or better: the question as binoculars through which you see the novel. The question is that knob that allows you to focus the plot.<br /><br />Jim Shepard: “It is… the question to which the novel keeps obsessively returning.”<br /><br />And here is my own notion of the question as a self-sustaining fire. The Question doesn’t burn out. You will return to it during those dark days when you’ll lose the novel – no one talks about that time, do they? – when you’re no longer sure where the book is headed, never mind if it’ll get there. That will happen when you write a novel or a memoir or a story collection. That’s when you need the question to sustain you. The Question is the engine. The Question is the beacon.<br /><br />The Question must be…<br />1) general and grand.<br />General because it can’t be, “Will Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky knock boots?” You’re not asking about your specific characters or your particular plot. You’re not asking what happens next. Remember: character and plot, that stuff is preceded by The Question.<br /><br />But, it must be grand, because it has to matter. Especially to you.<br /><br />The Question…<br />2) cannot be answered.<br />By you. Not now, not in four years, probably not ever. &nbsp;Kurt Vonnegut, when asked why he wrote, said, “I write again and again about my family.” That all his work, no matter what the apparent subject matter, was really about trying to understand his family. The Question is what eats at you, the thing you’re willing to spend your career trying to answer.<br /><br />The Question…<br />3) has to be something you feel in your gut.<br />Something that is endlessly interesting to you intellectually, but more importantly, something that is an emotional landmine. Because the emotional part has to come through in your writing. This is why when you begin a novel with only character or theme or setting, without The Question, it often feels lifeless. &nbsp;It’s a motley collection of organs without the nerves.<br /><br />“Authors don’t create anything out of whole cloth. Like the patient on the analytic sofa, we fixate on particular stories and characters and themes because they speak to the fears and desires hidden within us. Our inventions inevitably take the form of veiled confessions.” – Steve Almond.<br /><br />“Veiled confessions.” Well, if that’s not enough to scare the bejeesus out of any writer, I don’t know what is. &nbsp;He goes on to say, “The beauty of the artistic unconscious is that it allows us to sneak up on our own intentions or to disguise them altogether.”<br /><br />But what if… we tried to be more aware of our confessions, our intentions? What if it’s simply a matter of reading more, and writing more, and paying close enough attention that we can find our subliminal coordinates? I’m not keen on the idea that we’re always mindlessly spitting out confessions on the page. And why the shame? Why not know exactly what consumes us, and put it out into the damn world anyway?<br /><br />“Write what you can learn about. Alternately: Write what interests you. Because it interests you for a reason, and that reason probably has to do with the rough stuff of your inner life.” – Fiona Maazel<br /><br />Can you ever truly forgive? &nbsp;Does a scar mean you’re weaker or stronger? &nbsp;When we start to see someone for who they are, do we love them more or less?<br /><br />These are all variations of The Question. Note that there’s something general about them, something inclusive. Recognize them for their grandness, too. To speak of love or mercy is to be both general and grand. It is to attempt to throw a lasso around the world, to luxuriate in the impossibility of such a feat. &nbsp;For you, as writers, all that matters is that the question is already there, within you. You don’t have to go out to look for it.<br /><br />“Does a human life, a “personality,” exist as a single thread that can be followed through time? Is the “me” of twenty years ago the same “me” that exists now? Will I still be “me” in twenty years? &nbsp;I find myself drawn to these questions, and the more I think about them, the more they feel uncomfortable and difficult to answer…” – Dan Chaon<br /><br />Uncomfortable and difficult to answer. But it doesn’t mean you stop trying. &nbsp;Hemingway said, “For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment.”<br /><br />So, lest we venture too far afield into the abstract, let’s come back to earth. &nbsp;What if you’re sitting there, right now, worrying over the fact that you don’t yet know your question? What then? &nbsp;Write more. Read more. &nbsp;It is only by doing this that you can know what you care about.<br /><br />Be attuned to the work you write and read. Your taste in literature is a barometer for where you are in life, for what you need. Sometimes we read aspirationally, we’re drawn to works that portray what we want to be in that moment in our lives, works that speak to questions we’re wrestling with consciously or subconsciously. Even our tendency to read escapist works tells us something about ourselves, that we’re looking for something that can take us away from our own thoughts and biases.<br /><br />When you read the work of another author and feel gut punched by it, guess what… you’ve got a lead. &nbsp;Follow your queasy stomach. Ask yourself, what is the question this author keeps returning to obsessively? And why does it speak to me? &nbsp;What took this particular book beyond the realm of pleasure-reading to true nourishment? The best work, the work constructed around The Question, that is the work that feeds you.<br />Once you find it, keep it close to you. Lean into it. Use it in the beginning just to get yourself in that chair, when you’d rather do anything else. Cling to it when you don’t have a clue what you’re doing.<br /><br />Jim Shepard again: “We don’t know, exactly, what we’re doing when we’re starting something. We have a vague and skeletal and oafish idea that we articulate to ourselves as a justification for beginning, but that’s about it. It turns out, thank God, that what we end up with is more intricate and subtle than that. Mostly because it turns out that our intuition is a greater genius than we are. &nbsp;And mostly, too, because we’re not declaiming when we write fiction; we’re exploring. We’re turning characters that we’re getting to understand with more intimacy and confidence loose in certain situations, and observing their behavior, and what we believe and feel is then being mimed back to us. We’re in the process of teaching ourselves…”<br /><br />You’re teaching yourself when you write. Loosen your grip. Let the work teach you what it will ultimately be. Surprise yourself. Having a question means you already have a built-in scaffolding, a safety net. Fumble around in the dark all you want, you’re still exploring with a purpose.<br /><br />Interviewer to Wells Tower: Are you able to find those emotional goals yourself, or do you need other people, between drafts, to help you re-steer the boat?<br /><br />Tower: “I don’t know if someone else can tell you. When you are revising or looking at that draft, you know where the real wood is behind the fiberboard. You know when you hit something that feels real and true and that needs to be said, and then you go back and try to make everything feel like that, which is hard.<br /><br />I love that idea that in our own work, we can learn to distinguish between the real wood and the fiberboard. We’ve all had the experience of writing something we feel good about, only to return to it a few weeks or months later and cringe. That’s the blessing of time and fresh eyes. But even when you make massive changes, sweeping changes, don’t you often find yourself leaving one thing unchanged, whether it’s a paragraph or a piece of physical description, even a sentence or word? Something that you have no urge to touch or tamper with. That’s the real wood behind the fiberboard. &nbsp;And that, more often than not, is where you’ve come closest to bumping up against your Question.<br /><br />“Then you go back and try to make everything feel like that, which is hard,” says Mr. Tower. &nbsp;Hard to say the least. But isn’t it a small and beautiful comfort to know that we have a compass point?<br />Note that he says, “I don’t know if someone else can tell you.” That’s true. &nbsp;Only you know. Your question is born from your own life, your grief and joy, from the art that makes you gasp and itch to be in the game.<br /><br />Your question is your own ghost. No one else can help you identify it. Our job, as readers, is to watch you, the author, make a career of dancing with it.<br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-story-and-question_9365.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-2719423816141838892Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:09:00 +00002013-06-12T12:12:45.604-07:00Tupelo QuarterlyTime to take the leap and submit your poetry and prose. You know you've been thinking about it.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.tupelopress.org/">Tupelo Press</a> has long published beautiful books of poetry and literary fiction, and now they have launched a stellar literary magazine, <i><a href="http://tupeloquarterly.com/mission-2/">Tupelo Quarterly</a></i>, which aims to be -- as poet and Editor in Chief, Jessamyn Smyth, says -- "a home for all things beautiful, brilliant, and generous of spirit."<br /><br />Amen. I think we could all use a little more of that.<br /><br />I am delighted to serve Jessamyn as Senior Prose Editor, along with writers E.J. Levy and Eric Darton. Have a look at the ridiculously talented masthead <a href="http://tupeloquarterly.com/masthead/">here</a>.<br /><br />Our first issue launches in October, but in the meantime, <a href="http://tupeloquarterly.com/contests/">submit your best poetry to our contest, judged by Ilya Kaminsky!</a> &nbsp;The deadline is August 15th.<br /><br />Come on, poets. Be brave and submit!http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2013/06/tupelo-quarterly.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-8365560009614812153Wed, 08 May 2013 18:51:00 +00002013-05-08T11:51:21.672-07:00The Weeklings AnthologyThe Weeklings just released their first e-anthology, <i>Revolution #1: Selected Essays 2012-2013</i>. Edited by Jennifer Kabat, Sean Beaudoin, Janet Steen, and Greg Olear, this anthology features the work of some terrific writers, Robin Antalek, Lauren Cerand, Samuel Sattin, and Jess Walter, just to name a few. I've got a piece in there, too.<br /><br />Best thing is that it's only $4.99, and the good people at The Weeklings believe in paying their writers, so all money goes directly to the authors.<br /><br />Read more about why you should buy&nbsp;<i>The Weeklings Revolution #1</i> <a href="http://www.theweeklings.com/admin/2013/05/07/five-reasons-why-you-should-buy-the-weeklings-revolution-1-our-anthology/">here</a>.http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-weeklings-anthology.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-4035374489295354905Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:32:00 +00002013-04-23T09:32:15.710-07:00Ohio State University Prize in Short FictionDelighted to announce that my short story collection, <i>Hibernate</i>, won the <a href="https://ohiostatepress.org/books/series%20pages/osushortfiction.htm">2013 Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction! &nbsp;</a><br /><br /><i>Hibernate: Stories&nbsp;</i>will be published by OSU Press in 2014.<br /><br />About the book:<br /><br />In this collection of stories -- winner of the 2013 Ohio State University Prize for Short Fiction and finalist for the 2011 Flannery O'Connor Award in Short Fiction -- characters slowly wake to hard choices. A Sudanese immigrant tries to start a life with his girlfriend in the United States, only to find himself pulled toward his mother's past. A group of American tourists visits an Indian Pueblo and realizes their tour guide isn't at all who they expected. Their ship moored on the ice, a captain and his men cling to the company of narwhals and Eskimos. Published separately in numerous literary journals, these stories form a dazzling landscape of the strange and joyful.<br /><br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2013/04/ohio-state-university-prize-in-short.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5544795458824741173.post-1552547006016136993Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:03:00 +00002013-04-12T13:03:06.372-07:00Writers on the River in MayI'm so excited to be giving the first ever workshop for Writers on the River in Corvallis, Oregon! &nbsp;It's already sold out, but if you're interested in attending, contact these great people and get your name on the waiting list.<br /><br />To read more about the workshop, click <a href="http://writersontheriver.wordpress.com/writers-on-the-river-meetings-schedule/elizabeth-eslami-saturday-workshop/">here</a>.<br /><br />On May 20th, the Monday before the workshop, I'll be giving a presentation, "The Story and the Question," which is open to the public:<br /><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>In my workshop on the 25<sup>th</sup>, I’ll be talking about where and how to end a story or novel, so it only seems right that I first speak a little about beginnings. When you sit down to write, where do you begin? With character? Voice? Plot? Setting? <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>How much do you need to know – if anything – before you start committing those words to paper? Should you have a theme? Adopt (or already know?!) a particular style? Can you figure out some of this stuff along the way? <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>I’m going to argue that you begin with a question that you know you’ll never be able to answer. A question that means enough to you that you’re willing to fumble towards it for 350 pages. Nabokov has a fancypants description for this: “the subliminal coordinates with which to focus the plot.” Jim Shepard calls it “the question to which the novel keeps obsessively returning.” Call it whatever you want, but this is the question you are writing the book to figure out. The question is the eternal engine. Once you know your question, you are ready to begin.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>This presentation will last roughly one hour and will move fluidly between an informal lecture and audience Q &amp; A. We will likely look at several examples of these novel-generating questions and consider possibilities for our own.&nbsp;</i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><b>Presentation: The Story and The Question: May 20, 2013 6:30-8pm</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Dennis Hall at First Presbyterian Church, 114 SW 8th St.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Corvallis, OR</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><b>Workshop: May 25, 2013 &nbsp;Meet @ 9:45am for all day workshop</b></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Imagine Coffee House (Community Room) 5460 SW Philomath Blvd.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Corvallis, OR&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></div><br /><br /><br />http://elizabetheslami.blogspot.com/2013/04/writers-on-river-in-may.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Eslami)2